The right tools are an integral part of getting any job done. In the world of digital content tools are plentiful, so finding the right one for you can be tricky. That's why we ask the experts what tools they use to get their jobs done. In this month's installment, we talk to Ashley Taylor Anderson, Director of Content, Ceros.

Streaming Media Magazine Announces the "Streaming Media 100"

Today, Streaming Media Magazine (our sister site) announced the "Streaming Media 100," their editor's picks of the top companies in the online video space. The list was voted on by the editors and contributors to the magazine and streamingmedia.com.

Accoding to Streaming Media editor, Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, here's how the list was created:

"When we set out to select the inaugural Streaming Media 100, our goal was simple: create a list of the most important companies in online video. Actually creating that list was, of course, anything but simple.

We began with a list of nearly 200 companies, from all points in the online video ecosystem — from the record button on a video camera to the play button on the viewing device, and everything in between. Still, as you might expect from a publication that is at least in part a trade magazine, the list is heaviest on companies in the middle of that continuum and lightest on the companies on either end.

We considered developing a list of empirically verifiable criteria against which to evaluate each company, but then we realized that was a fool’s errand. While it might ensure against criticism, it wouldn’t in and of itself give the list any more value than what we ended up doing, which was to ask 10 industry experts — all regular contributors to Streaming Media — to provide us with a list of nominees to which we would all assign a value of 0 to 5; 0 being “doesn’t belong on the list at all” and 5 being “the list would be suspect without it.” Then we averaged all the judges’ scores for our final ranking. (In case you’re wondering, only one company — YouTube — scored a perfect 5.)"

Some of the household names that made the list were: AOL, Apple, Facebook, YouTube (Google), Netflix, BBC, Akamai, Hulu, UStream, and Microsoft. However, the list has a lot of names you might not of heard: Digital Rapids, Front Porch Digital, MediaExcel, Optibase Technologies, and so on. The full list of the Streaming Media 100 is available here, and provides a unique cross-section of the online video world.